Did we bring the devaluation of MP on ourselves?
At a party and of course the topic of FF programs came up and turns out many people were United FF.
The topics were initially the good old days. Some great stories. Someone reminiscent how they got 10,000 miles because his nuts (in first class) weren't warm, I recalled how I got 100,000 miles once because my flight to Hawaii was delayed three times. Then we started talking about all the ways we gamed the system (but fairly of course, nothing illegal): Inheriting status for award tickets was discussed as a great perk for gifts to underlings, booking tickets with connections in cities with great *A partner lounges etc. Essentially taking good advantage of the perks UA gave us.
Then the topics moved onto the devaluation and general degrade of MP.
But I couldn't help thinking aren't the two sets of topics connected? Since we over-used the benefits UA gave us, they of course devalued the program.
So did we bring the devaluation upon ourselves? Perhaps if we didn't go overboard with our uses of MP it wouldn't have been devaluated?
Thoughts?